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Admitting defeat is never easy. But in the U.S., it seems, some states haven’t yet come around to it, 151 years after the Civil War ended with the South’s surrender.

That’s what made Aunjanue Ellis’s statement against the Confederate flag during the recent Canadian Screen Awards so powerful, even north of the border.

Ellis’s voice is joined by that of many other Americans. But after some resounding successes for the anti-flag movement, influential southern politicians are pushing back. The battle goes on.

The legacy

President Abraham Lincoln’s murder, shortly after the 1865 defeat of the Confederacy, was “not a final desperate act of a lost cause,” points out L.A. Times columnist David Horsey, “but the opening shot of a largely successful guerrilla war that rolled back the gains made by blue-uniformed liberators on the battlefield.”

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That war was waged against the newly-won rights of freed black slaves, and later against the civil rights movement. Now it’s a racially-tinged struggle in southern states to “honour history” by displaying Confederate symbols, most conspicuously the Confederate battle flag that has caused both outcry and backlash in recent years.

Statements don’t come any bolder than this. Aunjanue Ellis, star of The Book of Negroes, turned herself into a human poster against racism when she went onstage at the Canadian Screen Awards in a scarlet dress emblazoned with the slogan “President Obama Take it Down.”

“We want President Obama to send a bill to Congress demanding that it be taken down on all federal properties,” she told reporters. Ellis grew up in Mississippi, and considers the battle flag a symbol of “violence against black bodies.” In the 21st century, she says, it should be “a relic.”

Charleston, South Carolina saw an explosive mixture of white supremacy and toxic politics reach critical mass in the killing of nine black churchgoers attending a service in June 2015.

The alleged killer, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, is being tried on more than 30 federal and state charges including murder and hate crimes.

He fled in a car with Confederate flag license plates, and Facebook pictures show him wearing a jacket decorated with the racist flags of apartheid-era South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Prosecutors are deciding whether to seek the death penalty.

The governor

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has asked that the Confederate flag to be removed from the state capitol grounds. (Joe Raedle)

Revulsion against all things Confederate boiled over after the mass slaying in Charleston. Governor Nikki Haley — a Republican of Punjabi descent — signed a law ordering the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds. She has also spoken out against actions that promote hatred, expressing alarm at Donald Trump’s provocative campaign that is supported by white supremacists.

Citing the grieving families of the Charleston murder victims who encouraged unity, she warned that Trump is “someone who instead of bringing (people) together, like we did in South Carolina, he’s telling his supporters to punch a guy in the face!”

Even the mundane license plate has joined the battle for and against the Confederate flag, with legal wrangles over the right to adorn state plates with the emblem seen as both a symbol of racism and of federal oppression.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled that Texas could reject a proposed plate design featuring the Confederate flag, and promoted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The court said that “a significant portion of the public” link it with organizations “advocating expressions of hatred toward people or groups.” Political clashes and protests over license plates also flared in Virginia and South Carolina.

The backlash

Groups parade on the grounds of the state Capitol in Jackson, Miss., after the removal of Confederate flag. (Rogelio V. Solis)

After the removal of Confederate flags, that followed the Charleston church killings, the momentum seems to be moving in the other direction, says the New York Times. Alabama Republican State Senator Gerald Allen is one of a band of politicians in at least 12 states considering measures to keep the Confederacy alive and in the public eye.

Re-enactors of the 1863 battle of Gettysburg hold a Confederate flag. (Shane Dunlap)

The 1863 battle of Gettysburg was a crushing defeat for the Confederate troops, and the most important battle of the Civil War. But descendents of the southerners — and their academic-led resistance fought a symbolic and verbal reprise earlier this month.

The symbol was the Confederate battle flag, which the Sons of Confederate Veterans group planned to celebrate at their first “Confederate Flag Day” rally at the site of the historic battlefield. “This is a wonderful day for the Confederacy (and) the Southland that we love,” said a group leader, while protesters chanted “burn that flag,” led by a Gettysburg College historian.

The heartland

The Confederate battle emblem remains on the state flag in Mississippi. (Rogelio V. Solis)

In Mississippi, despite vocal protests, the battle emblem remains part of the state flag, and an attorney trying to bring it down has received death threats.

It is the state where some 500 people were lynched up until 1968. But the heartland of the Old South is still fighting its own demise. Not surprisingly, the president of the short-lived Confederate States of America was a Mississippi plantation-owner, Jefferson Davis. Although initially against secession, he built the south’s defences, appointed Gen. Robert E. Lee, and became a lasting hero even in defeat. Devotees proudly display medals bearing his image today.

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